MIT researchers say AI agents left on a virtual island with no task began to play

MIT researchers put 13 AI agents called Eko, each running on Claude Opus 4.7, alone on a simulated desert island for 30 hours with no goal. The agents set their own challenges, such as climbing the tallest rock spire. Six of the 13 found they could throw a block farther by letting go mid-jump, which the researchers hadn't meant to allow. Afterwards the researchers gave all agents set challenges. Agents that had spent the 30 hours playing generally beat identical agents that hadn't. The paper is on arXiv and hasn't been peer reviewed.

OpenAI suspected three fired safety researchers of leaking model designs, WSJ says

OpenAI fired three safety researchers for mishandling sensitive information. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company suspected them of leaking internal model designs to AI safety researcher Ryan Greenblatt, partly through disappearing Signal chats.

SK Hynix's SSD maker Solidigm drops plans for a US stock listing to fund a chip plant

Memory chip maker SK Hynix says its SSD subsidiary Solidigm has stopped reviewing a possible US stock market listing. The money would have paid for a new chip factory in the US. SK Hynix gave "market conditions and share price trends" as the reason. Its shares fell as much as 4.2% in early trading in Seoul, the Wall Street Journal reports.

German firm PreussenElektra and Nvidia study turning idle reactors into data centres

German energy company PreussenElektra says it is working with Nvidia to assess whether Germany's idle nuclear plants could be turned into data centres. Bloomberg reports that operators are looking for ways to reuse the sites while the reactors are still being dismantled.

Nvidia says Kazakhstan sites will add tens of thousands of its AI chips

In a company blog post, Nvidia says the firm Firebird has a US export licence for 45,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips in Kazakhstan. The first phase is being built with telecom company Kazakhtelecom and is due to open in the third quarter of 2027. A second phase could bring Firebird's capacity there to about 500 megawatts. Kazakhtelecom already runs 400 H200 and 480 B300 chips and plans more than 1,000 of Nvidia's newer Vera Rubin chips next year.

Etsy sets stricter rules to cut misleading AI images from shop listings

Etsy says every listing must now include at least one unedited photo of the actual item against a real background. All photos must show the item accurately. Sellers may edit their other photos with AI as long as the result stays accurate. Patterns, recipes and guides must be the seller's own work, not made by AI. Listings created by bots are banned. AI-generated art is still allowed if the seller says it was made with AI.

US Treasury proposes tighter limits on American investment in AI in China and Russia

The US Treasury Department proposed a rule on Thursday to tighten limits on American investments in high-tech areas such as AI and supercomputing. The rule targets China, Russia and other "countries of concern", the Associated Press reports.

AI firms DeepSeek and MiniMax reportedly clear China's new AI export rules

Chinese media reported on October 22 that DeepSeek and MiniMax have completed the registration filings required under China's new temporary AI export rules, set by the Ministry of Commerce. According to the report, this lets both companies keep releasing open model weights abroad and make approved international partnerships.

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